It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of inky painty fingers, must be into mixed media, altered art, and all things artful! (with apologies to Jane Austen)

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

"Little Gidding"

T S Eliot

Thursday, 29 May 2014

Spread your wings .....

It is the second bi-monthly Craft Club art journalling challenge, and this time the prompt is "showcase a stamp you like, and one you don't".

The Club provided a heap of weird and wonderful stamps that could possibly qualify as an unloved one - depending on your point of view.

I chose a stamp depicting a heap of cats with wings. Now I like things with wings - but cats? No, I didn't like it at all, though I'm sure some of you out there will love it!

Keeping with the wing theme, I chose one of my favourite moth stamps. Entries have to be A4 sized, so I brayered paint over a sheet of watercolour paper, and used white paint to stamp "yes" and "no" over each half.

To ensure there was no confusion (!) I put a black cross over the stamp I didn't like. I also used a favourite border stamp too.

Still on the wing theme, I visited the National Gallery this week to see the Veronese exhibition, which has 50 works brought together from all over the world. Fabulous exhibition - here are a couple of my favourites (I bought the postcards!).

Lots of winged angels and cherubs in this one -

The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, about 1565-70

Veronese did a lot of commissions, and this is one of his portraits -

Livia da Porto Thiene and her daughter Deidamia, 1552

If you love Italian Renaissance I really recommend this fabulous exhibition, which ends on 15 June.

Finally, with the National Gallery being on Trafalgar Square, I couldn't resist taking a photo of another winged thing (no, not the pigeons!).

The giant cockerel on the 4th plinth - in a spectacular shade of blue. Need I say more!

It was a really dull and drizzly day, so the light was very bad. This was the best angle to take, but the scaffolding on the Canadian Embassy doesn't provide the best background!

3 comments:

Hello Kay, I just checked my blog list for the first time in ages and was delightfully surprised to see your creation near the top. I'm very touched that you picked Lucine as the yes stamp. Hehe, I have to admit as well that I don't entirely dislike the cats with wings. But I do have a tendency to find tacky things amusing ;) Can I post your card to my next blog gallery?

Just looked at the wall of fame, I had missed it completely, been a bad week and have even relapsed since Wednesday evening too. Not even sure I'll manage this fortnight's challenge now. Oh dear me. Thanks for letting me know. BJ